So Many

Oh its glorious my friends! The Bellflowers! The Bellflowers have sprouted. They are sooo tiny, and they are so incredibly small that I barely was capable of taking their picture, but I wanted to document their greatness. There's so many. I was so worried about the little guys that they weren't going to sprout, but I never expected them to be so small considering they are suppose to get about 12 inches tall. They are of course for the garden plot, not for the house, but still very exciting.

Anyway after the discovery this morning that the bellflowers had sprouted I went about checking on all the happy little babies and low and behold! Both the basil and the poor man's weather glass have grown the same height and look at them!

It has been such a wonderful Saturday. Apart from the bigness of all this, I just realized that the sunflowers, awesomely huge as they are, the roots are all puffy and fuzzy. Very neat.

Merry Christmas, Everyone.

That's right guys, Christmas can bring all sorts of cheer. This year it brought smiling faces and happiness to my family. Young and old. Emma got tons of presents and love from her family and I received a nice small stuffed animal (a hippo), whom I name Ludwig. But shockingly, as I mentioned earlier, that I was playing secret santa, Nicky turned out being mine and not only did she buy me some glorious Frost poetry, she also got me the very thing I had been staring at in the store not two day before! I opened my gifts and just about teared up when I saw them... TWO wondrous pie plates. I had stared at them so longingly and convinced myself not to purchase them and my goodness was I so happy.

And not only did she give me these wonder plates, she has also given me an adoptee. An aloe plant! Its a small cute little thing which is saying its goodbyes tonight. But Nicky, the awesome cousin she is, is my partner in crime. We spent almost an hour looking at pictures, a lot of which were her garden which consisted of beautiful tomato, peppers, and carrots. There were tons others, almost up to 30 pots I think. She really is a green thumb, but apparently little aloe plants aren't safe, hahah. She says that though she's loving her gardening, that the mystery of the desert plant eludes her, sooooo I am inheriting it.

Its been a great day, and this is a short update but I wanted to tell you about the aloe plant and its glory as well as Ludwig. Oh and my grandmother got me a 'fill it' cake kit. Very neat. You can bake with it to have a round cake with different colored layers. Very cool! I'll try it out later after today's pie dishes are done.

Merry Christmas guys!

Fury!

Can you believe it!? All those days of tending to those basil vigilantly and they produced flowers right out from under my nose! How am I suppose to turn them into basil oil if the basil can't be used because it was flowering! I'm so made I could just.... BAH! My fury will be unleashed!

Oh and for the record, those gorgeous sunflowers, despite my best effort, wouldn't pollinate and thus have come to the end of their road. The insides have dried up and the pretty yellow petals didn't last too long after. But they were beautiful while they lasted and I will cherish them just like I did the teddy bear sunflowers even after death. The savories didn't make it either and the lack of sun from the oncoming fall days and winter on the verge has sent them into a downward spiral. The baby basils are the only ones left of the babies. The savory didn't survive and nor did the baby sunflowers, but perhaps ts for the best. I don't want to have to force them into thinking they aren't in the warmth and happiness where they belong.

Oh well, if anyone has any basil oil recipes, lemme know!

A Distinct Lack of Sun

yes that's right people, its become that time of year where my plants are starting to lose about an hour and a half of sun per day and let me tell you its certainly showing in the nasturtiums. Its very distracting to see my plants get more and more droop in their step because of the stupid coming winter. I'm either going to have to invest in some kind of plant light for the poor things or there must be some other way to convince them its not time to die. I will not give in!!!

Anyway this morning, after dealing with a prolonged sore throat (bleh!), I finally got around to sitting down with my ever enthusiastic sister to jar the dry basil. I must say, it was certainly a better location to dry them in the cool, dark closet rather than in the living room on my lamp. Sometimes I wonder just what I was thinking, but then again this is my less than green thumb we are talking about and its basically useless when it comes to the facts of tending to basil. And ever MORE ambitious me, actually got around to finally hanging the basil plant that had been reduced to a stand for the morning glory that never REALLY did anything bit wrap itself like a python around the poor thing. Distracting. So I finally hung that basil and chucked the morning glory and its awful clay pot into the dumpster in my parking lot. About time! I'm finally rid of clay pots. I think I have finally learned my lesson about them, they are only good for smashing.

I also, was inspired by my mother of all people, the one who complains that 'my yard' has gotten too big, asked me to plant some more basil. As you can tell, this is a house of basil. Its the one plant I have managed to never REALLY mess up despite my green thumb flaws. I'm still monitoring the cress and savory with a bit of zeal. I am really hoping they work, but I think that this cress is summer cress and its under the impression that I am trying to hoodwink it. The savory I bought was winter savory, so they take forever to grow, but they can deal with the winter weather as long as they are indoors. At least that's the impression I get from its name. Perhaps I should do some more reading in the great big book of herbs.

Oh and so that everyone knows the update on the flowers! The sunflower buds are actually getting on rather well. They are about the size of a nickel now and they still haven't opened yet. I have never grown the kind with traditional sunflower seeds, so this experience is new for me. The Teddy Bear Sunflowers, fuzzy and cute as they were, had not real seeds and their blooms never got bigger than about half the size of my palm, which I believe for sunflowers is rather small. These new sunnies are suppose to get full sized heads on their shoulders, so I'm waiting and measuring in anticipation.

Mystery plant is growing quite well. I spoke with my greener half the other day (Nicky, my cousin with the garden of greatness), and she was talking about how she also would like to attempt sunflowers and I narrowly talked her into Mammoth Russians. Though she has decided that she would like to try, instead, something smaller first, and might attempt the Autumn Beauty variety that I was attempting earlier this year. They were far too big for my window. Speaking of! I had a Autumn Beauty, growing in the Dwarf Incredible pot that I had been working on so I had to pull it. I have discovered though, thanks to curiosity, that my rabbit, Pebble, thinks that are fairly tasty sprouts and she was snuffling about for more of them after I'd given her a small bowlful. Sometimes sprouts are just meant for a bunny mouth.

Alright, time for some relaxing yoga and a compress for my chest so that I can maybe breath later on today. Stupid cold!

The Mystery Plant!!!

That's right ladies and gentlemen, we have a mystery plant. Whilst weeding this morning I discovered in my sprout box, a plant which I haven't the faintest idea what it is! Personally it could be anything, but I've planted so many kinds of seeds in the sprout box that it be one of oh so many things that finally decided to sprout. At first I was under the impression the fairly large sprout might be a coreopsis, or perhaps a daisy of some kind since those two types of plants had been planted first in this sprout box. But then I checked the other labels on the box, discovering (that firstly, my organizational skills leave something to be desired), but that it could also possibly be a pansy, a shasta daisy, or even a Livingston daisy. I mean there are far too many possibilities. This also leads me to believe that if this single plant, all on its own managed out of the rubble left over dirt in my now empty sprout box, that it was MEANT for me to find it! I am meant to nurture this partially squid like plant and discover its true origin. Anyone with information on this plants DNA donors is more than welcome to let me know, here is its baby picture!